Jeff Zdrale: Could an atheist ever be president?

We've had our first Roman Catholic, our first biracial and, probably in the near future, we may have our first female president. Maybe even our first gay president. But what about a president who openly professes disbelief in God?

I'm not just talking about presidents like George Washington, who preferred to say Providence instead of God, or Thomas Jefferson, whose personal Bible had all the hocus-pocus snipped out, leaving only Jesus' moral teachings. I'm talking about a true on-believer.

Of course, legally, such a person could run for president. Article VI of the Constitution requires that government officials be bound by "oath or affirmation" to support the Constitution, but bans any religious test for a candidate's eligibility.

But this is the real life. Could such a person actually be elected? Could someone who would never end a speech with "... and may God bless America" ever take up residence in the White House?

I think you'd have two clear camps on this question. Group One would say, "Heavens no! How can a person govern with no moral absolutes? Without a belief in God, standards as to what is right and wrong would go out the window. Talk about your moral relativism and situational ethics? Man, we'd never know what to expect from someone like this! We'd have a loose cannon running the country. Not to mention any kind of principles in his or her private life. We're a religious country. Not believing in God? It's just un-American."

In defense of this position, Sam Harris in "The Moral Landscape," notes that 57 percent of Americans think that you need to believe in God to have good values and to be moral, and 69 percent want a president who is guided by "strong religious beliefs." You would be in good company if you were in Group One.

The other group, let's call it Group Two, might respond by saying something like this: "Yeah, we'll agree that religion is probably the most common source of personal meaning and moral behavior. But did you ever hear of natural law? This stuff goes way back, long before religion as we know it today. Why do you need the threat of not going to heaven as a hammer over your head to do the right thing? They might not have always done it, but mankind has known about doing good forever."

The more erudite of this crowd might cite C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man." He gives many examples of moral standards that, over the centuries, developed independently of any religious beliefs. Among others, they relate to the general welfare, duty to family and posterity, justice, mercy, kindness and honesty. It's quite an interesting non-religious stance being taken by such an influential Christian writer.

Group Two might get even a bit more edgy and side with the evolutionary biologists. These people hold that all of human behavior, even such traits as artistic preferences as well the needs for belief in a higher power, should be seen as environmental adaptations that made certain groups of early humans more successful at sustaining their lineage than others.

Altruism and compassion, the key foundations of almost all religions, are behaviors that caused certain groups of prehistoric people to form more cohesive and cooperative units. This promoted their success over other less mutually supportive clans in the process of natural selection.

Group Two'ers would end by asking, "Why should people who don't believe in God be any less caring or less committed to the welfare of others, or of the city or the country, than those who do? They know the difference between right and wrong too, and know that it's better to be good. Just like the Santa Claus song says, 'Be good for goodness sake.'"

So we're back to the basic question, whether it's about the president or about your mother-in-law. Is it possible to be moral without believing in God?

I think we're moving from exclusivity to more inclusivity in this country. Despite the large and growing gap between the haves and have-nots and the continuing polarization between those differing in philosophy about the role of government, other barriers are breaking down.

Skin color, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and even professed religious identities are becoming less important in making decisions about the "worth" of people.

I'm betting on Martin Luther King's vision that the "content of their character," as evidenced by what people actually do, will trump what they look like or what they say they do.